Mall Of America

By Jim McCartney and Jim McCartney,Knight-Ridder News Service | December 15, 1993

The Mall of America has shown it can draw shoppers, but now it faces a tougher test: Can it attract enough viewers to justify a daily, one-hour television show?NBC will "definitely go ahead" with plans to launch a daytime, hourlong, Monday through Friday home shopping show from the Mall of America in Bloomington, Minn., Michael Rollens, the producer of the show, confirmed last week.Details such as how the program will be distributed or when it will be launched will probably not be decided until early next year, Mr. Rollens says.

This isn't a tale of two cities. Not exactly. It's not even a tale of Twin Cities, which will probably miff St. Paul -- but, St. Paul, we'll make it up to you someday. This is about Minneapolis and the Mall of America. Minneapolis has 30 live theater venues, including two that have won Tonys: the Guthrie Theater and the Children's Theatre Company. The mall has 32 shoe stores -- not counting the four major department stores that also sell men's and women's apparel. Minneapolis has the expanded Walker Art Center, the Weisman Art Museum (building by Frank Gehry)

The Mall of America, already an extravaganza of commerce, took on an additional dimension this week when a group of churches agreed to rent space, provide counseling for workers and shoppers and hold at least one Sunday morning worship service.The ecumenical group is planning a service for Sept. 6 in the megamall's rotunda and hopes eventually to have one weekly. The service will be at 10 a.m., one hour before the mall's shops open.The service and counseling are being provided by the Mall Area Religious Council, made up of 19 congregations in Bloomington, Richfield, Eagan and Edina, Minn.

EDMONTON, Alberta - The temperature outside may have been hovering around 30 degrees, a raw September day even for this provincial capital in western Canada, but inside the West Edmonton Mall, it was still summer. Dozens of people were swimming in a 5-acre heated water park with palm trees, cabanas, a simulated strip of sand and machine-made waves. A short walk away, hundreds more looked on as a trainer cavorted with a dolphin. The water park and the dolphin show are only two of the attractions at the 5.3-million- square-foot mall.

BLOOMINGTON, Minn. -- Connie and Bill Barnes and their two teen-age "I love to shop" daughters will pile into the family car next month for the 10-hour trek here from their home in Topeka, Kan., to buy school clothes.In northeastern Montana, farmers Elizabeth and Carl Sauskojus, who have to drive 60 miles just to get groceries, are laying plans for a 700-mile pilgrimage to Bloomington to explore the exotic new department stores.From across Japan, 60 tour groups have already booked rooms for this year in Bloomington, a serendipitous stopover on Northwest Airlines' popular Tokyo-to-Disney World flight.

If you thought Pennsylvania's Hershey Park and California's Knott's Berry Farm were pushing it with their edible themes, consider General Mills' new Cereal Adventure. The miniature amusement park, which opened last month in Minnesota's massive and somewhat wacky Mall of America (home to Camp Snoopy and a giant shark tank), has a Cheerios play section, a Lucky Charms Magical Forest and a Cocoa Puffs Canyon, not to mention a Wheaties area where youngsters can get their pictures on the Breakfast of Champions box. Kids can play "chocolate adventure" video games in Cocoa Puffs Canyon, and the Cheerios and Lucky Charms areas have slides that end in giant, simulated bowls of cereal.

EDMONTON, Alberta - The temperature outside may have been hovering around 30 degrees, a raw September day even for this provincial capital in western Canada, but inside the West Edmonton Mall, it was still summer. Dozens of people were swimming in a 5-acre heated water park with palm trees, cabanas, a simulated strip of sand and machine-made waves. A short walk away, hundreds more looked on as a trainer cavorted with a dolphin. The water park and the dolphin show are only two of the attractions at the 5.3-million- square-foot mall.

WASHINGTON - Terrorist groups have cased at least five sites for possible attacks in the United States, including Walt Disney World, Disneyland and the Sears Tower in Chicago, three internal government reports said. Terrorists linked to Osama bin Laden's al-Qaida network also evaluated the sprawling Mall of America near Minneapolis and unspecified sports facilities, said two senior Bush administration officials familiar with the reports, who spoke on condition of anonymity. No evidence has come to light suggesting that attacks are - or ever were - planned on any of those buildings or theme parks.

This isn't a tale of two cities. Not exactly. It's not even a tale of Twin Cities, which will probably miff St. Paul -- but, St. Paul, we'll make it up to you someday. This is about Minneapolis and the Mall of America. Minneapolis has 30 live theater venues, including two that have won Tonys: the Guthrie Theater and the Children's Theatre Company. The mall has 32 shoe stores -- not counting the four major department stores that also sell men's and women's apparel. Minneapolis has the expanded Walker Art Center, the Weisman Art Museum (building by Frank Gehry)

BLOOMINGTON, Minn. -- The Mall of America is in Bloomington, Minn., a few yards off Interstate Highway 494, about five minutes west of the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport.Mall admission is free. So is parking. Stores are open from 10 a.m. to 9:30 p.m. Mondays through Saturdays and 11 a.m. to 7 p.m. Sundays (closed Christmas and New Year's Day). The 23 rides in Knott's Camp Snoopy cost $1 to $2.50 and are open the same hours weekdays and Sundays, and until 11 p.m. onSaturdays. Movie theaters and entertainment areas run past midnight.

WASHINGTON - Terrorist groups have cased at least five sites for possible attacks in the United States, including Walt Disney World, Disneyland and the Sears Tower in Chicago, three internal government reports said. Terrorists linked to Osama bin Laden's al-Qaida network also evaluated the sprawling Mall of America near Minneapolis and unspecified sports facilities, said two senior Bush administration officials familiar with the reports, who spoke on condition of anonymity. No evidence has come to light suggesting that attacks are - or ever were - planned on any of those buildings or theme parks.

If you thought Pennsylvania's Hershey Park and California's Knott's Berry Farm were pushing it with their edible themes, consider General Mills' new Cereal Adventure. The miniature amusement park, which opened last month in Minnesota's massive and somewhat wacky Mall of America (home to Camp Snoopy and a giant shark tank), has a Cheerios play section, a Lucky Charms Magical Forest and a Cocoa Puffs Canyon, not to mention a Wheaties area where youngsters can get their pictures on the Breakfast of Champions box. Kids can play "chocolate adventure" video games in Cocoa Puffs Canyon, and the Cheerios and Lucky Charms areas have slides that end in giant, simulated bowls of cereal.

We set out with a sense of foreboding. If you ever feel a boding, and later on something bad happens, that was a foreboding. We were traveling from Miami to Minnesota, a state located near, or possibly inside, Canada. The reason we felt a boding was that we were carrying a live baby, and we had stupidly elected to travel by airplane. I think that, instead of making such a big deal about weapons, the airlines ought to start cracking down on babies. Ask the average airline passenger: "Would you rather sit near a gun, or a baby?"

By Sandy Banisky and Sandy Banisky,SUN NATIONAL STAFF | October 4, 1996

BLOOMINGTON, Minn. -- There was the boy who aimed a gun in a food court. Then there was the kid who was nearly tossed from a fourth-floor walkway. All that came amid the usual tumult, the fighting and cursing and spitting that are the weekend routine as teen-agers congregate at the Mall of America.Tonight, the country's biggest shopping center will try to break the Friday- and Saturday-night siege of loud, rude, sometimes intimidating throngs of teen-agers. Starting at 6 p.m., children under 16 won't be allowed into the mall unless they're accompanied by someone 21 or older.

IF THERE'S anything we know to be true in life, it is that teen-agers scare adults.There are a couple of theories on this. One is that most adults were once teen-agers and have forgotten what it was like.The second is that most adults were once teen-agers and remember what it was like.Anyway, I'm at the mall -- Towson Town Center -- on a Friday night to see teen-agers. I've come because the Mall of America -- the largest mall in the world, the Disney World of malls, a mall so large that it embraces an amusement park with an actual roller coaster -- has banned kids under the age of 16 on Friday and Saturday nights unless accompanied by an adult.

In a major step toward bringing the nation's largest retail and entertainment complex to Silver Spring, Montgomery County officials yesterday agreed to join forces with a Canadian real estate firm to develop the $585 million project.The agreement to proceed with the so-called American Dream represents the latest in a decade-long effort to revitalize a 28-acre tract in Silver Spring's derelict urban core, roughly equivalent in size to downtown's Charles Center.Montgomery County Executive Douglas M. Duncan, in announcing the agreement with Triple Five Development Eastern Ltd., compared the project to Harborplace, the Rouse Co.'s festival marketplace that revitalized the Inner Harbor 16 years ago."

Perhaps it is fitting that even as we settle into the austere and frugal 1990s, we still have monuments to the excesses of the 1980s popping up. They serve as cautionary reminders of those wild times that seem increasingly distant and surreal.Our first case in point: the Mall of America. Aptly named to underscore the grandiose vision of its backers, the mother of all malls opened yesterday outside Minneapolis. Mega-malls pale when compared to this one. Inside its glass and steel superstructure, Mall of America boasts 327 stores, three miles of corridors, an amusement park, a miniature golf course, nightclubs, movie theaters and the largest number of indoor plantings achieved anywhere.

Is bigger better?The developers of Mall of America hope so.Now under construction in Bloomington, Minn., a suburb of the Twin Cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul, the megamall is not only big, it will be the biggest shopping center in the nation when it opens this summer.This Paul Bunyan of shopping centers is a giant in every way. Being built on the 78-acre site of the former Metropolitan Stadium, where the baseball Twins and National Football League Vikings played before the Metrodome was built, it has a floor area of 4.2 million square feet, about the same as in the Sears Tower in Chicago.

Minneapolis -- I went to the Mecca of America near Minneapolis. It's called the Mall of America. It has two freeway entrances all its own. It's the size of my hometown in Romania. It's self-sufficient.Not only is it self-sufficient; it has everything. Clothes for the body. Shoes for the mind. Food for the hungry. A hotel for the sleepy. Action for children. Heat for the old. Roller-blading routes for the limber. Jogging space for the trim. It has a huge Lego ball that rotates while you eat. There are Lego dinosaurs and a plunging canoe for you and your date.

BLOOMINGTON, Minn. -- Eighty of the 133 people aboard the 8 a.m. flight from Grand Rapids, Mich., and thousands more passengers from Milwaukee and Omaha and Cleveland and elsewhere, landed at the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport with a single purpose in life.They did not have the expectant, searching eyes of a traveler meeting a loved one. They did not look up for the signs for baggage claim. They were not wearing coats; they would not be needing them, even in December in Minnesota.